Adrian Reid breaks down backtesting software by strategy type: portfolio systems need tools like AmiBroker or RealTest, while single-stock systems have different requirements. He recommends RealTest for speed and ease, stresses that quality data from NorGate or MetaStock beats free sources, and notes costs run a few hundred dollars for software plus $40-50 monthly for data.
Questions this video answers
RealTest
AmiBroker, RealTest, MultiCharts, Wealth-Lab
MetaStock, MT4, MT5, TradingView
NorGate (Australia, US, Canada) and MetaStock (global)
"I think it's 40, 50 bucks a month" (speaker quote)
Chapters
Now if you're going to backtest, what trading software do you need? How do you even do this? Depending on what type of system you're using, different training software is required. I trade a lot of portfolio Systems which means one system holds many stocks, so 20 different stocks in the one portfolio controlled by a system. If you want to use system systems like that, you need a portfolio back testing software. Amy Broker, Real Test, Multi Charts, Wealth Lab, all do that. If you have a single instrument system like this set of rules applies to this ticker. Let's say you're trading the SPY and you have rules that trade the SPY in and out and it only trades a spy, you can back test that on Meta Stock, MT5, MT4, TradingView. Although Trading View backtest is a bit ugly but anyway you can also back to single instrument systems on portfolio software like Amy Broker, Wealth Lab, Real Test, et cetera. So I really prefer portfolio back testing software because it gives you so much more flexibility. The one that I really like at the moment the most is Real Test because it's, it's just so powerful, super easy to code and works really fast. I have used Ami Broker for many years. I've also used Multicharts. I've also used Wealth Lab. That's the kind of software you need. It will cost you a few hundred bucks depending on which software you want to buy. You also need the data so you need a historical data subscription. I use two data sources, so I use Nor Gate for, for the Australia, US and Canadian stocks and I use Metastock for everything else. Get a good quality data source because having good quality data is really critical. You don't want to use free data for backtesting because you get what you pay for and the data won't be adjusted for stock splits. It won't be, it won't be error corrected and you won't have any dividend adjustment and basically it'll just be mayhem account. You'll get erroneous results. So use good quality data. Nor Gate is my first choice. Absolutely. For those for Australia, US and Canada. For anything else you need to use, you need to use metastock. Good thing about Metastock is it has one data subscription that gives you every stock market globally. So for I think it's 40, 50 bucks a month you, you can get access to the data for every single stock and that means you've got a lot of data for back to see and validation on. Okay, what else? Let's get into some more advanced stuff.
